The Song of Troy

Colleen McCullough's novel ' The Song of Troy' was a chance find at a book fair. The author is better known for her best-selling work ' The Thorn Birds'. For anyone who has given up reading Greek mythology having got mired in difficult to remember names and complicated genealogies here's a wonderful re-working that is hard to put down as told from the point of view of some of the protagonists themselves in Homer's Illiad and Odyssey.
The author has meticulously researched the characters and the time they lived in to create a rivetting, realistic account that makes it live up to the claim of the sub title of the book as 'A story that will outlast History.'
The abduction of Helen, the legendary beauty of Greece and wife of Greek king Menelaus, by Paris, son of King Priam of Troy is 

the widely believed reason for the decade-long war between the two countries that resulted in the loss of countless lives and some of the finest warriors on both sides. Recall the famous opening lines of Homer's epic - The face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Illium...Though this is made out to be the immediate cause of the war, the lesser known fact is the ambition of Menelaus'  brother, King Agamemnon  who had designs to enrich himself from the sack of Troy and carve an empire for himself in Asia Minor.
Hector remembered Menelaos' description of his wife Helen in superlative terms. But he always had his reservations when men called queens or princesses beautiful because too many of them inherited that epithet along with their titles! Yet, even Hector had to succumb to Helen's charms when she made her first appearance in Priam's court. This is how he describes her:
'...As I remember her on that day, she was just...beautiful. Masses of pale gold hair, dark brows and lashes, eyes the colour of springtime grass rimmed with kohl drawn outward in the manner of Cretans and Egyptians.
But how much of it was actual, how much of it a spell? That I will never know. Helen  is the greatest work of art the Gods have ever put upon Mother Earth.
For my father she was fate. Not so far gone in old age that he had forgotten the pleasures to be had in the arms of a woman, he looked at her and fell in love with her. Or in lust. But because he was too old to steal her from his son, he chose instead to take it as a compliment to himself that a son of his could lure her from her husband, her children, her own lands. Swelling with pride, he turned his wondering eyes upon Paris.
They were certainly a striking pair: he as dark as Ganymede, she as fair as Artemis of the forest. Without doing more than take a stroll, Helen won the silent room completely over. No man there could continue to blame Paris for his foolishness.'
The ancients believed in a sacred code of conduct even though their battles were brutal and steeped in blood. Any violation of this code spelt doom. Achilles was driven to fury when he was mocked at during a duel with Kyknos as duels between members of the Royal Kindred were as sacred as rituals  till one was killed and the ritual continued till the body was stripped, the head speared and exhibited and the carcass fed to the dogs. At nightfall all hostilities came to an end. An oath taken was  equally sacred and broken at peril to oneself.
When Priam finally gives the go ahead to his pride and joy to attack the Greeks, Hector cannot wait for the dawn. McCullough describes in detail the armour as Hector accoutres himself:
'...My armour lay ready. Andromache (his wife who tried in vain to dissuade him) forgotten as my excitement rose. I clapped my hands. The slaves came, put me into my padded shift, laced on my boots, fitted the greaves over them and buckled them on. I swallowed down the desperate eagerness I always felt before combat as the slaves went on to dress me in the reinforced leather kilt, the cuirass, the arm guards, the forearm braces and the sweat leathers for wrists and brow. My helmet was put into my hand, my baldric looped over my left shoulder to hold my swords on my right hip; finally they slung my huge, wasp-waisted shield over my right shoulder by its sliding cord and settled it along my right side. One servant gave me my club, another assisted me to tuck my helmet beneath my right forearm. I was ready.'
The biggest blow for the Greeks was the fall of the mighty Achilles as a result of Paris' cowardly treachery. Very poignant is the fate of old Nestor who already lost two sons in the course of the war and now with a heavy heart has to bury his youngest son who wouldn't be left behind at home and sneaked into Troy without his father's permission. Achilles had a premonition and had already entrusted his mistress Brise, a Trojan princess who fell to his lot, to the safe keeping of Agamemnon and others to be handed over to his son Neoptolemus.
The mighty giant Ajax, turns violently mad after the death of Achilles and kills himself upon his sword. In the words of Automedon, 'In eight days they were both gone: Achilles and Ajax, the spirit and the heart of our army.'
Read on to find out how the suspense-filled scheming of Odysseus finally brings to an end the ten-year long war and the fates of Helen and the survivors.